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We have investigated the chiral charge-density wave (CDW) in $1T$-VSe$_2$ using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements and optical polarimetry measurements. With the STM mesurements, we revealed that the CDW intensities along each triple-$q$ directions are different. Thus the rotational symmetry of $1T$-VSe$_2$ is lower than that in typical two-dimentional triple-$q$ CDWs. We found that the CDW peaks form a kagome lattice rather than a triangular lattice. The Friedel oscillations have the chirality and the periodicity reflected properties of the background CDW. With the optical measurements in $1T$-VSe$_2$, we also observed a lower rotational symmetry with the polarization dependence of the transient reflectivity variation, which is consistent with the STM result on a microscopic scale. Both $1T$-TiSe$_2$ and $1T$-VSe$_2$ show chiral CDWs, which implies that such waves are usual for CDWs with the condition $H_\mathrm{CDW} \equiv q_{1}\cdot(q_{2} \times q_{3}) \neq0$., Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 1 Table

A systematic temperature dependent study of the femtosecond optical superconducting (SC) state destruction and recovery in Bi$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$CaCu$_{2}$O$_{8+\delta}$ cuprate superconductor by means of the all-optical polarization-sensitive multi-pulse spectroscopy is presented. At low temperatures and a partial SC state suppression an anisotropic SC-gap recovery-timescale is suggested by the data. The SC state destruction and recovery dynamics are compared to the recent TR-ARPES-inferred SC-gap dynamics and a qualitative agreement is found. Using a phenomenological response function the experimental data are also compared to time dependent Ginzburg-Landau model simulations.

The dynamics of excitations with different symmetry is investigated in the superconducting (SC) and normal state of the high-temperature superconductor Bi$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$CaCu$_{2}$O$_{8+\delta}$ (Bi2212) using optical pump-probe (Pp) experiments with different light polarizations at different doping levels. The observation of distinct selection rules for SC excitations, present in A$_{{\rm 1g}}$ and B$_{{\rm 1g}}$ symmetries, and for the PG excitations, present in A$_{{\rm 1g}}$ and B$_{{\rm 2g}}$ symmetries, by the probe and absence of any dependence on the pump beam polarization leads to the unequivocal conclusion of the existence of a spontaneous spatial symmetry breaking in the pseudogap (PG) state.

We use femtosecond optical spectroscopy to systematically measure the primary energy relaxation rate k1 of photoexcited carriers in cuprate and pnictide superconductors. We find that k1 increases monotonically with increased negative strain in the crystallographic a-axis. Generally, the Bardeen-Shockley deformation potential theorem and, specifically, pressure-induced Raman shifts reported in the literature suggest that increased negative strain enhances electron-phonon coupling, which implies that the observed direct correspondence between a and k1 is consistent with the canonical assignment of k1 to the electron-phonon interaction. The well-known non-monotonic dependence of the superconducting critical temperature Tc on the a-axis strain is also reflected in a systematic dependence Tc on k1, with a distinct maximum at intermediate values (~16 ps-1 at room temperature). The empirical non-monotonic systematic variation of Tc with the strength of the electron-phonon interaction provides us with unique insight into the role of electron-phonon interaction in relation to the mechanism of high-Tc superconductivity as a crossover phenomenon., Comment: manuscript as accepted in PRX, main paper (20 pages, 3 figures) plus supplementary material (25 pages, 19 figures)

The processes leading to nonthermal condensate vaporization and charge-density wave (CDW) melting with femtosecond laser pulses is systematically investigated in different materials. We find that vaporization is relatively slow (tau_v ~ 1 ps) and inefficient in superconductors, exhibiting a strong systematic dependence of the vaporization energy Uv on Tc. In contrast, melting of CDW order proceeds rapidly (tau_m = 50 ~ 200 fs) and more efficiently. A quantitative model describing the observed systematic behavior in superconductors is proposed based on a phonon-mediated quasi-particle (QP) bottleneck mechanism. In contrast, Fermi surface disruption by hot QPs is proposed to be responsible for CDW state melting.

We discovered the chirality of charge density waves (CDW) in 1T-TiSe$_2$ by using scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) and optical ellipsometry. We found that the CDW intensity becomes $I{a_1}:I{a_2}:I{a_3} = 1:0.7 \pm 0.1:0.5 \pm 0.1$, where $Ia_i$ (i =1, 2, 3) is the amplitude of the tunnelling current contributed by the CDWs. There were two states, in which the three intensity peaks of the CDW decrease \textit{clockwise} and \textit{anticlockwise} when we index each nesting vector in order of intensity in the Fourier transformation of the STM images. The chirality in CDW results in the three-fold symmetry breaking. Macroscopically, two-fold symmetry was indeed observed in optical measurement. We propose the new generalized CDW chirality $H_{CDW} \equiv {\boldmath $q_1$} \cdot ({\boldmath $q_2$}\times {\boldmath $q_3$})$, where ${\boldmath $q_i$}$ are the nesting vectors, which is independent of the symmetry of components. The nonzero $H_{CDW}$ - the triple-${\boldmath $q$}$ vectors do not exist in an identical plane in the reciprocal space - should induce a real-space chirality in CDW system., Comment: 12 pages, 4 figures

We report the ultra-fast optical response of quasi-particles (QPs) in both the pseudogap (PG) and superconducting (SC) states of underdoped (UD) Bi$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$CaCu$_{2}$O$_{8+\delta}$ (Bi2212) single crystal measured with the time-resolved pump-probe technique. At a probe energy $\hbar\omega_{pr}$=1.55 eV, it is found that the reflectivity change $\Delta$R/R changes its sign at exactly $T_{c}$, which allows the direct separation of the charge dynamics of PG and SC QPs. Further systematic investigations indicate that the transient signals associated with PG and SC QPs depend on the probe beam energy and polarization. By tuning them below $T_{c}$ two distinct components can be detected simultaneously, providing evidence for the coexistence of PG and SC QPs., Comment: 4 figures. One report on the ultrast dynamics of quasiparticles in underdoped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8

The comparison of the single-particle (SP) dynamics between the whisker and ring NbSe$_3$ crystals provides new insight into the phase transition properties in quasi-one-dimensional charge density wave (CDW) systems., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures

The degenerate four-wave mixing spectroscopy of uniaxially strained GaN layers is demonstrated using colinearly polarized laser pulses. The nonlinear response of FWM signal on exciton oscillator strength enhances the sensitivity for polarized exciton, allowing for mapping out the in-plane anisotropy of the strain field. The observed high-contrast spectral polarization clearly shows fine structure splittings of excitons, which are also confirmed in the change of quantum beating periods of time., Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures. Submitted to Physical Review B